


Second Chance

by corporateCasual



Series: Mort Squared [1]
Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: FUCK YOU, M/M, dont look at me like that, i guess, mortycest - Freeform, on this day, the day of my daughters wedding, you come into my house
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 15:44:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5054494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corporateCasual/pseuds/corporateCasual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morty and his more divergent double set out to right the wrong, save Rick, get into trouble. </p><p>POV's switch per alternating chapter. hopefully that's clear enough without me having to explain. going to see how this plays out, so let's just see how this goes, warnings and ratings will be updated accordingly :B</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Void (Introductions)

**Author's Note:**

> just testing the waters out for morty [squared], which used to be a joke, but whoops look what happened

Accurately speaking, and in a very general sense, the idea that there exists a single concept of sentient morality in relation to general right or wrongness is a blasphemy against the infinite definition of the cosmos.

 

It is a truth that, despite its terrifying nature to most life forms without basic comprehension for sixteenth dimensional quantum physics, has kept you suspended in a cosmic cold that you find blankets you safely at night. Years ago, running from the burning carapace of your childhood home, you had learned sub-subjectivity and self-righteousness? Those were for- that talk is for chumps, Morty. It’s for losers. You don’t, don’t want to be a loser, do you..?

Fifteen steps ahead of every current decision, and this is your saving grace. This is who you are, who he’d want you to be.

You blink at the distant cold of your window view, still black from spatial void, while the silicon coating of adaptive cords gives its familiar tug that traces across the lacrymal sections of your right eye. It’s a reminder of the solid anchor of your own reality, and the hypothetical justification that if this carries out, you are one step closer to bringing things back to the way they were.

Gods, you know for a fact that this is something you could dedicate a life time to.

So it is against every fighting instinct in your body then, that you find yourself still metaphorically pinned to the tousled sheets of a small military bunker with the data screen embedded into your iris blinking -- what, already? -- twenty minutes past five a.m., and very much literally pinned down by a stray arm across your chest, leading to a mirror image of yourself as it snores gently into some frayed bed sheets you had dug up in one of your ship closets.

“Morty.”

He stirs, causing the mustard yellow of yesterday's shirt to ride a fraction of an inch higher over the small of his back. You didn’t have time to convince him to change into the regulated sleeping attire before he had draped himself over you last night.

And then it’s almost hypnotising, the grandiose way his back rises and falls with the rhythm of breathing; a version of yourself perhaps in a timeline where paranoia hadn’t ruined your nerves to stay on the very brinks of REM for your own safety. A luxury you can’t help but feel your own brand of bitterness towards, because this is like looking into a version of a war-torn wasteland in its greener days. You slip an arm over him, nudge the crook of your nose just under the bit of chin he sticks out in his sleep. You burrow yourself against him, soaking in the warmth and real softness of it all. You do it like it isn’t routine. It’s almost genuine.

“Morty,” you say pointedly, a little louder.

You keep your eyes shut so you don’t see his flutter open, because that’s the part that always catches you off-guard.

He hums softly, instinctively curling the whole of his lean body to face you and slipping an arm beneath your weight. There’s such a small space to share on the bunker, you don’t mind the shift as you stretch your legs out with the new freedom.

“God, it’s early,” he says.

Your fingers shove at his chest and he looks at you questioningly.

“Not really. We’re behind schedule and we should have touched ground an hour ago to do maintenance checks.”

“You, you really let me sleep in, huh?”

“Get up,” you order, and then suddenly he’s a stretch of small, gangly limbs and yawning complaints while you watching him slip into new gear. Months of living in shared quarters have beaten the understanding into him that you have a two-reminder limit before he is ungraciously flipped out of bed and suplexed onto the metal floor, last night’s activities notwithstanding. 

This is morning for you two, in the dark void punctuated with small flickers of lightyear-distant white dwarfs and exploding supernovas. In the first weeks, you had had the smallest amounts of pity for his unrefined cycles, and made mental notes to take dock in planetary outposts that held true to sunrise and sunsets. But with the need for progress, it became an eventual routine to rely entirely on the ship’s pre-programmed night and day cycles, while C137 regulated his sleeping patterns accordingly. 

 

_“You’ll take care of him, won’t you?” she had asked, without much effort mustering up the maternal concern that stretched out the absence of her in his own reality._

_She had lost someone else so recently, and this, this could damn well near break her apart. But the promise of gaining both back for the price was almost too tantalising, and he stood taking this into consideration as he stood rigid in front of her, one gloved hand in soldier’s salute over his metal patch._

_“You can count on the, the council… m-mom,” he had said._

_The stammer was a nice touch. The budding trace of a tear tipped the edge of her eye, caught only by the sight of her own son standing in the doorway, backpack slung over a shoulder and portal gun in his hand._

 

That had been almost a year ago. Almost a year ago before the whirring monitors ensconcing your personal base had emitted an almost singular alarm, indicating a flux in one of the dimensions. A fracturing reality that wouldn't miss its Rick because, without inter-dimensional interference, he’d be as good as missing anyway. One particular dimension. It was almost ridiculous, the irony.

You had meant what you said through the empty mouth piece of one version of your grandfather back then. There was a chance to bring him back, the way he was -- before this had all turned to hell, because he and that Rick weren’t so different after all. It had taken him so long, but he had found him. One shot to return to how perfect things were, before losing him had meant you had to rewire a version of his shadow into an empty puppet you could play a semblance of a normal life with. Until that hadn’t been good enough anymore, and then everything had settled oh so neatly into focus.

You would bring him back. Patch everything up so cleanly that it would have only ever been a bad dream, the violation of the council’s regulation laws, the lack of an explanation, the departure; you could get him back. And then it had been so easy to disguise yourself as a pawn of their mock government, slipping as easily in and out as you had been for years, and then convincing C137 to take a chance on saving his Rick from death or worse.

You feel an unfamiliar drop in your stomach thinking of this, and in a brush with your current situation you are snapped back into reality when your doppelgänger lays a hand gently over your shoulder. He is kitted out identically to you now, all black and grey straps over netted opaque spandex, as ready as he could be for danger despite your best attempts to keep him out of the action.

“He-hey, you okay? Maybe you want to, you know, lie down for a bit.”

You can’t help but note the wide way he looks down at you, and it’s all admiration and genuine concern. You’re still sitting on the edge of the bunker, legs hanging off the sparse mattress as you watched him silently.

“You don’t look so good, M-morty.”

You wish he wouldn’t call you that.

“I’m still tired,” you say, and reach out your arms for him so that he is confused, but leans down to meet you anyway, wrapping himself over you as if you still felt like a child. You place a chaste kiss across his lips, and then brush yourself off as you stand.

“Let’s get to work."


	2. Cassiopeia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's just maintenance work, broh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> small additions, editing in certain portions of this chapter, read again if you like catching up on pretty small details  
> otherwise proceed on

You sweep your index finger and thumb over the glowing red fuel bar, raising temperatures in the storage bunker back to standard work settings. Satisfied, you slide the latching closed with some flourish and give an agreeable resounding thump in affirmation.

The flatline of his tenor sounds out first, and he taps a knuckle against the heat-warped exterior as his lanky form emerges from around the curve of one of the engines. The feet of his spandex kick up small clouds of sand as he approaches, a small desert illusion of grey kevlar and rags. He is a slender, more angular version of you; more gristle from harrowing escapes and death-defying adventures than the baby fat of your previous life.

“This isn’t a six-lift engine tow, Morty, don’t start banging around the chameleon panels until I have a chance to replace them.”

By the looks of it, you think, it may as well have run through the same haul anyway. The SX-620 was a mock reboot of one of the older federation ship models, initially meant to cart single scouting parties only a few clips across a couple of galaxies at a time and definitely nothing above standard low pay-grade drone work. But the first time you had stepped through the acid green glow of the portal onto this other Morty’s docking pad, it had been patched and re-patched and reconstructed from the landing gear up into some kind of renegade star shooter, with its quad-combustion tanks and ill-fitting plasma cannons.

In scratched and faded script on starboard panelling could be read the title _Cassiopeia II_.

Much more impressive than any single shooter he and Rick had ever had a chance to encounter, Rick's own customised scouter included, but with the same wear and tear of the obsolete and discarded model it had once upon a time been.

You press at the two buttons on your gloves to power them down before giving him a grin.

“Ready for the fun, the exciting part, huh?” you say hopefully, “those parts aren’t gonna, gonna, pick themselves up.”

A wrinkle forms on the bridge of his nose as a memory shoots up to the surface. The shadows from beneath his pile of head wraps only seem to highlight the slight contortion this makes across his face.

Two weeks ago you had set off a warning siren across a military field while performing back-up surveillance, only to trigger what had seemed to be a swarm of enraged six-foot hornets to come barreling at you in the dead of night. It hadn’t been until he had walked out from one of the nuclear storage facilities to find you raising hell that you had been saved, dragged back by your hair roots to keep watch at the ship hull instead.

You had been on look out duty and ship transmission ever since.

He grips at the hem of one of his work gloves, tugging it off and tossing it in your direction.

“You know you’re grounded until you can be trusted to perform minute covert operations,” he reminds you.

“Still, you know, there’s no way I’d ever learn if you-you’re just gonna keep me locked in all day,” you stammer, and add, “you know you need help if we’re going to fix everything up before sun down.”

He relays responses more in nods and incoherent grunts if he can help it, bedroom excluded, and right now he gives a sigh as he rubs at his forehead in irritation. You may not know much, but you know for a fact that he isn’t one to overestimate the degrees of work you can put into a single ten-hour light cycle.

A few more seconds of this and he reaches a hand into one of the utility clips of his belt to pull out a flat black square, about an inch in size and lined with a few green circuit patterns that glint as he turns it over for you to review.

“Okay,” he concedes, “but on the condition that you keep this _on_ this time, understand? It’s trigger sensitive until I deactivate it and I don’t want to run into any more wild goose chases because you can’t follow simple instructions.”

“I’m not an idiot, Morty,” you say, and take the small square from him with some reluctance.

It’s a malleable transmitter, acting two-way through the user’s nerve system for communication and alerting if the trauma sensors are triggered by spikes in the wearer’s take of physical damage or electrical shorting. His own way of keeping tabs on you. Admittedly, you think it’s one of his more endearing habits.

You stick the patch into your mouth, feeling it clamp almost instantaneously onto your left molar and give its small buzz of activation. Electromagnetic signals begin wiring a sting directly through your most sensitive nerves (jesus you hate this part the most) and static images flash their imprints into your brain. Blueprints and model memory shudder into the spaces between once idle synapses.

A mere few days into your departure for the stars he had realised your modalities focused on the visual and kinaesthetic, reshaping his modus of sharing information around this. He regarded you pityingly: it was no wonder then why basic multiplication had been an almost impossible feat while you readily handled iodised zirconium reconfiguration like an old habit.

Boy, you wish you had, you know, maybe found that out back in middle school. Would have gotten a lot of people right off your ass.

“Got it?”

“Got it,” you repeat, blinking a few times, eyes downcast at the red and yellow speckled sand while the visuals take hold, “That never gets easy.”

He scoffs and hands you a pea-shooter. It’s old; still been built to fire solid metal slugs.

“That’s all you get, and it better be all you need,” he says darkly. You nod in understanding and slip the gun into a pocket while your free hand reaches for his and gives a small reassuring squeeze.

You know he says he hates these sickeningly sweet gestures but you watch his shoulders lose tension anyway.

“I’ll be across the sand market, gathering some sort of mapping info to chart our progress to the detention facilities.”

Beneath the frayed hood, his right pupil emits a infinitesimal spark of light behind its black recesses, “if there’s so much as a blip on the trauma detection I’ll be right with you.”

“Stop worrying so much, geez.”

“Grab some gear from sleeping quarters, the sun out in the wasteland planets can burn the hide off a Gazorpian’s back in a matter of minutes, suit or not.”

You nod again, feel the balls of your feet shuffling in quiet hisses in the sand, anticipation building with the thought of finally, finally, getting to do something worthwhile around here. You look out into the distance.

A few earth yards of a trek away, you see the hazy outline of the desert Infinity Market, blinking in and out of sight with the heat waves spilling out from the wasteland beneath you.

—

_“Freshly decapitated gevazks! Guaranteed six legs for the price of one!”_

_“Plutonium, Plutonium at discount prices!"_

_“Get your shmekkels for florps! Exchange rates never lower!”_

_“My, my! A pretty headdress for the young lady?”_

In the corner of your eye, one of the wasteland merchants holds up a ream of intricately geometric textile, most of five eyes trained into you with all the practice of a lifelong wheedler.

“Pretty prices for a pretty girl,” she croons, “straight off the coasts of the Betelgeuse empires. Stuff for kings.”

You don’t even regard this kind of commentary anymore, continuing your silent trudge through the hustle and bustle of the infinity market. Not deep enough, you think, recognising the shallow accents of more legal bidders.

Around you come the buzz of small desert reptilia, little dragon-esque things that have somehow developed life on this dusty piece of rock. One lands on your shoulder and you brush it off, only to have your hand nipped in bitter regard to this.

Half an hour later and cloth and fresh meat give way to rainbows of toxic crystal in dusty black casings, bits and pieces of metal embellishments with hastily scrubbed off military track codes. The air is thicker here, despite the same harsh beating of the dual suns above you; the absence of the fly-dragons a strong warning signal that this is the part of the markets where not much comes back out alive if anyone can help it.

Instead the atmosphere has grown thick with harsh whispering and the guttural speech of the seedier kind of alien, some of them emitting bestial growls and throaty incoherent murmurs you have only ever heard from that other version of you when deals are struck in the slums and drums of underground-run planets. You wonder how far into this throng of civilians he’s gotten while you stumble around in overcasting tent shadows that seem to shrink you the darker they grow.

You stop at a stall where you are sure at least one seller isn’t haphazardly picking at its teeth with curved scimitar-like blades or flipping laser pistols from hand to hand to hand in lazy warning.

“Camouflage… Cham-chameleon panels,” you squeak, adding, “please.” Earth english. Interplanetary languages was never your strong point.

The stall owner gives what you can surmise as a sort of coughing chuckle, before pointing a crabby pincer down a path that seems to snake off farther than you’d care to discover. You toss a handful of what you suspect is the proper amount of silver-coppery coins onto the wooden counter and sidle away before you manage to set anyone off with your cultural ignorance.

Rough chatter follows close behind as you step sideways towards the direction the thing had pointed. Here the shadows of strange lopsided caravans and cobbled structures almost blot out the heat of the sun, and the cool air clings beads of sweat inside your cloth hood.

You manage to make eye contact with a towering giant of a beast, all grey scales on hide and fly eyes, heavy looking metal panels bound with wire to the exterior of his stall. It’s unlike most of the other merchant properties; all glinting steel on steel with exposed circuit bands still hanging wildly off faded sheeting so you know this is the good stuff.

You point to one of the scrubbed off metal sheets, bowing your head and murmuring a question about its price. That same chattering chuckle again.

“ _You think... have enough?_ ” It demands, switching its dialect into a thick and rubbery take on your own speech. It sounds suspiciously Siberian.

“I have lots,” you say, taking out a tiny leather purse and jostling it, while the surrounding air interrupts with the unmistakeable sound of clinking metal and glass. More odd laughter as bystanders pool in to watch things unfold.

And then you empty the contents of the purse onto the countertop and the world around you turns so abruptly silent you can hear every plink as rarified gemstones and glimmering alien gold spills out into the superheated air.

The hulking tower of insect meat glares down at you. “Whole inventory for this?” it asks.

“N-no, just, ah, just the one,” you mull things over in your head for a minute, “maybe three if you think that’s oka--"

You don’t even have time to take in a breath before you’re lifted into the air by the crook of your arm, the rough skin of some interplanetary warlord threatening to cut through your spandex sleeve as the hood of your costume flips back and reveals a mottling of soft brown curls on the terrified features of a human boy.

Oh god, you really dropped the fucking ball on this one.

You’re lifted so high you go face-to-feature with one giant eye as it bulges from its jointed stalk, and then all you can see is a mile-wide smile of teeth that have too much of a resemblance to kitchen knives you only ever see on late night reruns of Hell’s Kitchen.

“Price for is one human,” it spits out. It’s in broken context but the venom it gives off is enough to chill your blood in a second. You think you notice one of the scene bystanders slip the brute a rod that fits uncomfortably small into the crook of its claw, and then only a flash as the buzz baton strikes neatly into your lower ribcage and sends a few thousand volts through your pubescent frame.

Thank every fucking god you’ve ever heard of for the suit.

The cloth would have been no match to dull the current’s stopping your heart in an instantaneous grand finale, but the underlying spandex absorbs enough of it to give you the idea that you only ever ran your socks too long against some wool carpet, acting as a lightning rod and redirecting the deadly flow back to whatever grounding system it can locate. Which, at that exact moment, happens to be the arm of one very pissed off Diptersian warlord.

You think the resulting yell shatters an eardrum but at the least you are dropped spine-first onto the stall’s fronting countertop with an unceremonious thud that knocks the wind from your lungs and causes you to roll off into the sandy grit without much flair. There’s a ringing in your ears while you gape for the stale air to re-inflate your lungs, and then that is when you feel the silent buzz against the inner linings of your cheek. You wonder for a minute if maybe one of the dragon-flies had snuck into some hidden lining of your hood when your pupils widen in realisation. Shit.

“Oh my g-god,” you wheeze out at one of the dizzying images of a giant settling on his feet to tower over you. Are there four of them? You try to settle on getting the ground to stop bucking beneath you and on the incessant buzz that grows stronger with every passing second. Feels like your tooth is trying to rattle its way out of your skull.

The grey apparition seems to raise four bulky arms into the air, maybe, maybe intending to bring them down with a finalising crash.

You try to force your brain to emit some kind of sentence.

“You fucked up, man."

You hear the crowd — when did a crowd get here? — shout a chorus of noisy laughter, then immediately fall silent in single mob mentality as a red circle of light blossoms slowly from the Diptersian’s torso. It even commands your full attention for a moment before suddenly the towering menace is gone and replaced by an ear-splitting explosion and a rain of meaty green viscera and stray exoskeleton that leaves projectile holes in most caravan walls within a near mile radius.

There is a nano-second flash of green below you, and then all you recognize is the gravity of this foreign planet sucking you into the liquidated base of an open portal. Before you slip in past the ears into the muffle of the transporting gateway, there is the rough push of arms gripping into your sides, a falling curve of stretched out limbs and black-on-grey netting and opaque kevlar that folds over you protectively.

The portal closes with an anticlimactic wisp, and you realise you are now hurtling towards the open sky for a brief three seconds before planetary physics once again makes itself known, throwing you and your attached assailant back into the ground. Hard.

Sand is a much less forgiving cushion than you would think, especially if it has been condensed and thickened with the broiling heat and gravity of a dual sun system and a planet big enough to hold the fabled infinity market every other week.

Before you make ground contact you are flipped back to face the sky, and land on something too soft to be the desert landscape and too bony to be a larger chunk of the tenderised tendons that still cling to the front of your torn costume. It also gives out a small “oof” as you both make hard contact with the harsh reality of solid matter, and then proceeds to dispel a series of worrying coughs.

Hands shove you off so that you land face-down in a cloud of dirt and rock, while to the left Morty keels over into a tight curl away from you, trying to regain some rhythm into his breathing. From what you can see in a primarily horizontal too-close-to-the-ground sort of way, _Cassiopeia II_ is resting comfortably by a miniature sand dune, new chameleon panels already welded perfectly into place.

Your mind is blank. You think beside you and out of view your double has managed to reclaim as much oxygen as his lungs will allow for the moment.

This is reaffirmed as you are helped onto your feet; one arm tucked underneath your armpit and helping you limp back to the ship before you realise you can still walk and clumsily take some foothold. His hold is gentle while you steady yourself, almost embracing the whole of you just in case you decide now is a good time to lose consciousness.

“I’m, I’m okay,” you say loudly.

“Yeah?”

His eyes are still lidded from exhaustion but they look straight into yours, similar irises flitting as they try to scan your face for any sustained damage underneath the green slime that coats your features. He’s got a small cut across his cheek, but other than this and the murky hue of red-yellow dust settling over him, he is none the worse for wear.

You nod slowly, palming the right of his cheek, realisation of what happened washing over you in a sudden wave.

“Yeah.”

There is genuine relief that crosses his features, and then suddenly you feel a sharp pain from behind your leg and find yourself for a third time staring into the great yellow heat of an endless sky. The back of your head throbs slightly from the impact.

He tucks his outstretched leg back beneath him with grace and peers down to meet your eyes.

“I told you to _stay with the fucking ship_."


	3. Aquilae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty gets chewed out for getting into trouble, broh, then things get a little steamy. 
> 
> M-Rating on this one. Think you know why, dawg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edited small portions of chap2 so if you like you can read through that again, trying to fix things up while we go along

“It wasn’t such a big deal!”

You don't give a verbal reply, but you slip a car keychain off one of your belt loops and press a button in the direction of the ship. Tail lights blink in response as it announces its presence in the shadow of the adjacent sand dune, a comical auditory _woop woop_ that startles some of the roosting dragon-flies to take to the air in alarm.

Side panelling sweeps upward with a hiss as more habitable temperatures try to adjust to the planet's dry heat.

You have his arm in a hard grip, taking huge strides that leave him stumbling and scraping at excuses behind you while you steer him towards the welcome comfort of the awaiting hull, and when the door closes behind you, you unceremoniously loosen your grip and allow him to sprawl to his knees on the floor. You throw your hood on him for good measure.

He’s sputtering in disbelief as you take your place in the pilot’s seat and rev the engine launch sequence into life, key twisting in its place hold. There’s a bit of a shake while the start up kicks into gear, and then the sound of dying machinery somewhere in the guts and grime of the combustion chambers.

You twist at the key again, a little rougher.

The floor shudders. No good.

You sigh and fold your arms up to rest behind your head, using a foot to prod at a lever that activates the system’s hydration coils. Damn thing’s overheated again; this little detour shouldn’t have lasted more than half the day cycle and you don’t even have the coordinates to show for the trouble. Damn. Damn damn damn .

Your eyes are closed in hard focus when you hear him quietly take the passenger seat beside you.

“Hey,” he says.

Silence.

“Hey,” he repeats insistently, a little more apologetic in tone. 

“I’m irritated, Morty.”

You respond automatically, eyes still closed. “I am telling you this because you have said that you have trouble understanding my facial and behavioural cues.”

The weight of silence must have gotten to him because he almost bursts with impatience once he finds out you’re ready to start talking.

“You wouldn’t have to tell me if, you know, you, you, knew how to look more than just pissed at me all the time! You’re so...” he trails off.

After giving him a moment to calm down, you slit an eye open to acknowledge this comment.

“I wasn’t the one who messed things up, Mort.”

He scoffs and crosses his arms. “Yeah, but we got what we came here for, didn’t we?”

“No,” you say, rubbing at your temple, “no we did not. We got _your_ end of the chores for today done, but that meant I had to give up on retrieving some kind of guiding pattern to Rick’s holding facility. _Again_.”

You lean forward, turning a head to glare at him. You’re not very good at extreme emotions of annoyance but you think this shames him enough into looking at least a little abashed at his actions, and his cheeks flush as he rises to his feet.

“Look, I didn’t ask you to follow me around like some stalker, god! You’re not responsible for every-everything I do! I can handle my own shit without you always--”

“Only I am,” you cut him off, swivelling the captain’s chair to meet him eye-to-eye in the midst of his temper tantrum, “and if it wasn’t for me you would have been sold for bits and pieces as fresh meat while tiny fantastical dragon babies laid eggs in your eye sockets in a baking wasteland sun!”

Maybe it’s the heat. You never did like extended stays on this planet; even on Red X you mostly bided time away in the cool confines of your Morty-protected dome while that Rick maintained a close eye on your crustacean bodyguards. Sneaking, stealing into closed federal networks, information gathering while the comfort of night silenced the soft thuds of your departing footsteps: now those were your specialties, not skulking around in in the open rubbing elbows with civilians like some two-bit grunt in a bargain-bin disguise.

It would explain the bubbling in your stomach as it spills out in the unusual form of more dialogue than you can remember giving in a long time. You think your voice threatens to betray an adolescent crack from the strain.

“You keep fucking up! If you want to give me a reason to trust you on your own when it counts then you’re more than welcome to,” you continue, more loud than you intended so your ears ring a bit, “but don’t throw your bullshit at me when I’m busy hauling your useless loud mouth around while we try to rescue some god damn Rick I’m not even sure you want anymore!”

His mouth slacks open a bit at this, and you slide back down into your seat.

“Christ,” you finish lamely.

You stare back up at him, so tired from everything you can feel your eyes threaten to close there and then if the recognisable pump of adrenaline wasn’t keeping you upright. Your eyes are clear enough now, though, to notice that Morty is standing in front of you, rigid and fist-clenched, his bottom lip quivering ever so slightly.

 _Shit_ , you think.

“You think I, I don’t want to do this?”

You don’t respond.

“Maybe, maybe,” he stammers, gesticulating wildly for emphasis, “maybe I don’t! Maybe I’m sick of all this, this stupid shit that doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere fast enough!”

“M-maybe I’m sick of you, too!” he spits out after a second of thought.

His eyes begin to well up with tears. You’re probably supposed to say something at this point, but you can’t seem to get a well-formed idea past _oh shit oh shit_ , which in turn has some trouble showing up on your face. Maybe you really do have a problem expressing standard human emotion, if only for lack of practice on other people.

He takes a step closer in your direction so you have to crane your neck to keep meeting his gaze.

“But I’d do almost anything to get Rick back, have mom stop, stop crying every night! Have a _home_ to actually come back to, god, I don’t even e-even know if they’re still alive and I’m in some kind of fucked,” he hiccups, “fuh-fucked up sci-fi rigamarole in space, dating a moral, morally defunct robot version of myself and I don’t even know if, if, if they’re still _alive_!”

There’s a single bitter laugh, followed by a couple more hiccups that punctuate a long stretch of silence, his fingers flexing open and closed before he decides to stomp the short distance away from the cockpit to living quarters.

The loud slam of the metal door shutting makes you blink in surprise, and then there’s the cheerful beep of the cooling system signalling the ship is ready to start the launch.

You are alone in the cockpit as you give out a loud sigh, more tired inside you than out.

The flip of a switch fills the room with an electric hum as hidden processes pick up where they left off, and when you turn the ignition key there is a shudder that echoes through the old ship as the engine starts. You flick on the autopilot to guide itself some good five thousand miles above your position on the planet’s equatorial horizon.

Somewhere behind the door you can hear something crash to the floor, followed by barely audible swearing.

When you open it, Morty is standing by the small foldable plastic picnic table he had, during their flight through the dimension A-26E, christened as the ship’s dining room. The room’s about a few feet around, only enough to fit two chairs and a table, once only enough for you to pace around the room while he regarded you from one of the two rubber deck chairs you had put in as a courtesy for him. The only embellishments beyond the depression of doorways is a couple of framed pictures he had carted along, one of his family and Rick on vacation to some hamster-in-ass dimension, and one photograph of the two of them Morty thought might be charming since this was, well, i guess you could call this our new home, a mobile home, sort of, he had said.

There is a splash of coffee on his freshly changed tee shirt and the remnants of a ceramic mug on the floor at his feet.

“Geez,” he says miserably.

You don’t say anything, walk to the picnic table with its small pile of paper napkins from cosmic drive-thrus and tow-ship diners. You absently pick one up, getting on a knee to wipe at the mess on the floor and holding out your hand when _Abadeeh’s Steak and Earth Meal_ fades from fluorescent red to a dismal mud brown in your hand.

You repeatedly draw your fingers bank and forth until he begrudgingly hands you more paper towels, until the mess is, by his standards, technically gone. You can mop it all off when he heads to bed.

And then, if only because you have a couple dry napkins left, you dab at the quickly drying mess on his blue shirt. 

“I can clean myself up uhm,” he says. “Stop."

You do, and look up at him.

You say, “Help me up,” and he does, leaning down to support you by your elbows while you get to your feet and meet him at eye height. You wonder in the back of your mind if he is intending to grow taller than you one day, if your similarities begin and end with the dark brown of your eyes.

Between you both there is more innocence in him; where in you the strain on mind and body have forced you into an angular frame and slightly broader shoulders, there are still small remnants of childish baby fat in of him: the soft of his cheeks and the gentle way his brow still keeps him wide-eyed and wondering at a thousand multiverses beyond his comprehension. Where you are sharp and cold and calculating, in him there is a warmth you are always desperate to scratch at the surface of, some kind of naivety you crave but are terrified of spoiling with your oil-slick working hands. You touch at his face so gently he barely feels it, but shivers against your fingers anyway.

“Open your mouth,” you command, and he gives a soft _oh_ before reaching in and handing you the small transmitter, now dull and bent while you crush it in your hand, and something behind your right eye whirrs and grows silent.

And then without warning you lean forward and kiss him, lip to lip and soft and sweet, the way you know he likes it. You do this because you can’t think of anything else to say in this situation, because you know this is how he forgives you best. You do it because in some ways, the weight in your gut isn’t there when you have this reason to keep him around.

You feel his hands search clumsily to loop behind your neck, fingers intertwining in its hairs as they pull you in deeper. You brush the wet heat of your tongue against his to encourage him and are rewarded by a little hum that escapes as you push your weight to guide him against the narrow walls of the room, one hand gripping tightly against his waist and the other searching blindly for the cabin door’s handle.

The shift in anything to lean himself against has him falling backwards, caught on the tiling of the sleeping quarter's floor while you sprawl over him, desperate to keep your mouth over whatever you can get. He hitches a sigh when you trace a wet kiss across his neck, dragging the tip of your tongue against the sensitive skin leading up to the back of his ear that sends static through his veins the way you know gets him going.

“Damn, Mo-mor— ” you catch his mouth in yours before he can finish. He doesn’t object when you slip your hands under the loose fit of his shirt, trace your fingers along the sides of him as they catch against the fabric until it’s pulled up around his collarbone, rest them against his chest while your thumbs trace lazy circles against the nubs.

“God,” you hear him hiss against your teeth, and you take it as a signal to move your lips down to clamp their heat against a nipple, his back arching in pleased response. It’s a strong contrast against the cold linoleum of the floor and you can almost feel him grind his teeth while your practiced fingers dance quietly across bare skin.

They slip lower, lower, slowly to outline each minute detail of his jutting hip bones, down to the hem of his jeans where you can tease your fingers below and against the soft skin, one hand rubbing at the quickly growing strain in the denim catch. Your teeth scrape gently against him and you can hear him whispering desperately to _oh god stop being such a fucking tease already j-jesus_. 

Brass buttons slip neatly between fingers that know this routine oh too well, and you take a firm grasp of the hard-on beneath his boxers, palming it in an envelope of warm heat while you feel his fingers tangle up in your hair, his mouth spilling out praises as you leave wet kisses and playful nips leading down the soft sensitive area of his stomach.

You reach in past gartered cotton, slowly pumping while your free hand slips the boxers down against his jeans until they bundle up at his knees, meeting the rush of cold air as you take the head into your mouth greedily and circle his tip. You turn your eyes up to catch his reaction, and his eyes are shut in focus at the sensation. Beads of sweat run down his temple. His brows furrow with the effort of keeping quiet.

You lick down the underside of his shaft, down and back to the slit, where you taste the salty beads of pre-cum already spilling out.

“Don’t hold out on me, baby,” you coax, and pull back an inch or two while your index finger teases at the soft tissue behind his balls. He moans in response and you kiss at the delicate skin around his hilt, pleased.

He opens his eyes, furrowed and laden with fever heat, _G-god, babe…_

You climb to your knees, reaching down to help him get his legs free from the tangle of his jeans and slip his shirt off. Naked, a slight shiver for the cold running down his spine, he looks more fragile than you remember, and it’s almost beyond your restraint to want to run your lips over every inch of him, cover him in any kind of burning heat from you as if it was a blanket, any kind of shield that could keep him safe from the void you feel seeping into the two of you as the ship ascends silently past the planetary atmosphere.

Both of you still lie with your legs entwined halfway through an empty doorframe, so you guide him to the small comfort of your single military bunker, kicking the door shut behind you.

“Turn over,” you instruct him, and hand him a pillow to help prop his hips up.

You retrieve a little bottle from a pocket of your belt as you peel off your own spandex and squeeze a generous amount of lube onto your fingers. You notice the weight of your breath when you wrap your own fingers around your member, coating it smooth and slick while you lean over the small of his back, bare of your chest against his spine, peppering it with dry kisses and soft praise. _You’re so good, babe_ , you tell him as you trace a lube-coated finger against his entrance, then slip it inside as a breath catches in his throat.

In and out, in and out. You tease fingers into him, preparing him in a slow tease until he is almost begging into the threadbare sheets, rutting against the pillow to gain some friction against his twitching cock. _Jesus_ , it takes so much not to groan as you fit yourself inside him, his pressure tight and hot on your dick.

“You feel so good, babe,” you grit your teeth as you fill him, “So fucking good.”

You fuck him slow and deep, the way that drives him crazy, leaves him wild and rutting and begging for more while you twist and press against him in the angles that make him see stars.

“A-aa-ahh, sh-shit, babe,” he repeats, “baby... " Over and over like some tantric mantra, loose cries escaping him each time you drive yourself straight into his favourite spot. Each clench of him around you is a slow unraveling, and soon you are held on by nothing except the white-heat of your clenched knuckles around his waist and the sound of his voice pouring into the liquid heat boiling inside you, waiting for release.

You reach down to wrap your hands around his cock, back and forth down his length until you feel the whole of his body beneath you catch in a sudden shiver. He screams your name and it comes out in a wave. You feel the thick of his load dribble down and through the spaces in your fingers, make a mess of the cushion beneath him. His ass clenches around you and the pressure spills out in time, a matched rhythm that leaves you filling him with hot spunk that spills out as you remove yourself from him, orgasm hitting into you and knocking breath out of your lungs that you weren’t aware you’d been holding.

Somehow you manage to keep yourself from buckling your weight onto him in your post-orgasm fatigue, instead wrapping both arms along his waist and turning him as you gently let yourself onto the bed space beside him. It feels just right like this, skin against bare skin while you try to steady your breath to match his. You do your utmost to wrap every inch of him against you to soak up the seeping afterglow. Sometime ago you had begun to think that somehow, in the open gentleness of his mind, the experience must be a hundredfold of whatever you might ever hope to feel.

“Morty,” you mutter into the silence, and he responds with a sleepy _hmm_ , as he tilts his head back to rest on your collarbone. 

“You didn’t mean what you said, did you, when you,” you trail off to lean your chin against the back of his head.

“Are you really tired of being with me?” Your sigh reverberates against him, and he struggles to turn his head and meet your eyes. Looking up at you, tired in his core and meeting your curious stare with his, he is silent.

“N, no,” he admits, so quickly and defensively almost as if he is insulted that you’d ever consider his being serious about it, “No, I… like being around you. Pretty much all the time.”

He turns abruptly in your arms to face you, eyes half-lidded begging for respite. “I think I, you know, _like_ like you,” he whispers. The expression is so serious you feel like laughing but it’s so unfamiliar it catches in the back of your chest, just something you definitely haven’t done since gods know when.

“Go to sleep,” you say, and lay your mouth against his forehead until his breathing turns deep and hypnotic, and you know he is asleep.

Despite the reminder of today’s excitement settling into the ache in your bones and your mind's pleading for deep slumber post coitus, you find yourself struggling to keep your eyes open to focus on the damp rise and fall of your double’s chest against yours. You twine the fingers of a hand around his, lifting them up carefully so as not to wake him, and bring them to your lips.

You leave soft kisses across his knuckles, dotting them along the small hairs that line the bridge between the bony divides of his hand. Of the entire afterglow, between falling asleep to Morty’s serene, almost saintly features, and waking up to the wide eyes that regard you with more admiration and genuine compassion than you’d ever known, you think you adore this part the most.

You think of the lack of callous in his hands, the taut scarring earned from the past year that gives no comparison to your own labouring digits that have been mangled and repaired more times than you can remember you have been on the run. You wonder, in such quiet moments, about the life you had stolen him from, about the normalcy of an adolescence run by hormones and school and daily household chores. You wonder if with enough time he would have dreamt of something else beyond a life waiting for his grandfather to return, a life so unlike your own. You dream of a life for him, where he learns contentment and the humdrum of his own home. You dream of a life for him without you, beyond what you are doing.

In the void beyond the port hole glass you see the twinkling of the celestial river, here in this dimension identified by _omicron eridani_ ’s burning twin spheres replaced with a single white dwarf, dull but flaring close enough to feign a more impressive magnitude for smaller telescopes.

“Eridanus,” you mutter under your breath, the automatic response of your right eye tracing invisible pathways lining the constellation pattern.

There is the hum of daily machinery somewhere, and you listen to this as you drift quickly into a blank, illusionless sleep.


	4. [Intermission] Orion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> important things are happening elsewhere, dawg. time to take a break and see what else is happening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is for willdew, who reminded me i've had this on the wait list long enough.  
> i might be making some switches in writing style after this intermission when we get back to our favourite kids, but hopefully not enough to change things too much.

There is no stark black that envelops a spiralling white citadel, speckled and wound in minute spots with the dim pulsating call of drunken bars, where versions of an old soul stumble blindly into the darkness in hopes of finding their way home. It is punctuated with the peep and tom of a stray brown haired boy now and then, stumbling over waste bins or heading into little apartments where they collectively sleep in wait for their new caretaker. There is nothing remarkable about these beings; there is nothing remarkable of a city varied with species and altered versions of the same kind of sleep.

Here in the stolen cityscape there is only a gradual gradient of dark navy’s and orange firefly glows, never the black. Here in this city of borrowed and reconstituted technology is the sleeping belly of a living animal that flows and ebbs to the blood flow of a single head. Up ahead there is no glow of distant stars. The stars had gone out eons ago. They have always been hidden here, in the vestiges of the end of time and space.

There is nothing wrong with that. Things have always been this way.

Safety, after all, is in the rigidness and unchanging nature of the law.

Safety, after all, is in the hands of five men.

The city flows like this: it is of rounded boundaries, with the north and south wastelands stretched far and wide and seeping into the cold binds of a deep dark ocean. From its edges there rises like a slowly erupting mass low-roofs and few storey buildings until the center of it all blooms into the better noted high rise and luxury. And deep, deep at the heart, within the bowels of the ivory tower, metaphorically speaking, there is a rounded chamber deep in the heart of that beast of a city, where few men enter and even less leave in good spirits, save the five who always come and go in routine.

The Council.

Even the weaker Ricks can count their fears on a single hand, should their dimensional counterparts have any to begin with. Long ago the entire lot of them had congregated and flocked for the sole understanding that the universe had sputtered and become too small for them to fear; far better instead to unite under an order that worshipped themselves as the gods they so rightfully were. And here, even the weaker Ricks can count their fears on a single hand.

But if there should be a single digit left to enumerate on such, each and every one of them will tell you that it will begin and end with the Council.

They themselves weren’t a fearful bunch. Hell, who the fu-URhp-ck even voted Rick Prime in, anyway? That asshole didn’t have the balls to match the ones he licked. But god, for what they did represent in this city of gods.

There is an order that governs over a city of ruthless deities, from the regal Athenians of terran lore to the slums of the southern R’khaon isles with their mouthless underground gods and blind cherubs, and here it is no different.

Riq IV is a single mouthpiece to one unit, and here among his seated co-council he is vigilant to welcome the approaching figure as it slips in through the chamber doors. This figure that arrives is not particularly impressive, not in the way that the five regal stand before him in their starched white and gold trim, not in the way they keep their upper lips stiff and well-trimmed in comparison to the butch stubble of an unkempt five o’clock shadow.

He is not impressive by the way he looks, not the lidded disinterest of his eyes nor the shabby brown leather vest over cuffed brown sacking cloth that forms over him in a way that insinuates he has long piloted over wars that this world has only heard of. He is not impressive for the way his holster hangs empty now; not for the way his pockets are empty in the way the secret lining of his coats never are. But here Riq IV, in pause from the way he has been speaking to him, hands him a photo that might have been mistaken for a thousand someone-else’s entirely, and then all of a sudden there is nothing average about him.

If auras were a tangible thing then there sure as hell was something that sponged out into that room, something greedy in the way it had once tasted the chase and was now aching for another opportunity for it. This version of Rick looked up, smiled almost gentle, and placed a hand across his waist. Bowed low, almost as if he meant it. Thanked them wholly, almost as if there was no sliver of light glinting as it dipped into the hidden catches of his sleeve.

If there was the smallest inkling of a cold shudder up Quantum Rick’s spine just then you could never have discerned it.

Rick bows, smiles, and then leaves. There is no collective thought of breaths held until the door closes behind and there is the retreating echo of footsteps behind it against the cold granite set against the vacuous air of a late evening. Then there is a general nervous snickering, a little quarrel over who should be made to close off the chambers tonight, and then cautious departure after they send Rick Prime to reluctantly see if Rick has left the chamber hallways for good.

In this city of gods, there is hardly a fear that might list higher than the council. Even the weaker Ricks count their fears on only a single hand, even the stronger will hold that there is the single fear and that is of the council. But there are the Ricks that survive. Old souls that have gone through hell and back, countered across the abstract deserts of Kromulon-7 and traversed blindly at breakneck speed across the countless galaxies of the Omnicron A’kila realities like terrified beasts. Broken men who either rise to the top or sleep in the gutters but always, always do they survive. Broken men are the wisest, and this they do know above all things and above even their fear of collapsing chaos in a society of gods: there is only one thing a Rick ever ought to fear, and that is the hunter.


	5. Cepheus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty and Morty end up in the jungle. Things get pretty weird, dawg.

When you wake the bed is empty, sheets neatly folded and snugged perfectly at the crook of your armpit where a certain someone ought to have been. It’s all right, you’re used to it, you think, and limber up your spine in a satisfying stretch. You notice the blanket’s also been pulled squarely to your shoulders, and tucked just under the tips of your toes. You give out a pleased little hum. It’s one of his nicer habits.

You shuffle out of the room as you squirm into yesterday’s second-skin suit.

“I’m up! I’m up,” you call, and emerge from a swathe of fabric only to be greeted with the kind of silence that the only the hectic overdrive of greenery and insect life can make, and the ship’s door pulled low to reveal a lush sampling of vegetation and sunlight. Ferns poke timidly through the gaping entrance.

“Uhmm,” you say pointedly, and almost immediately he responds, “I’m outside” from beyond your viewing range. You lean your head out the port entrance and sure enough, there he is, knee deep in a good circulation of almost emerald-like contortion of shrubbery and decked in one of your spare pyjama bottoms and an old gas station freebie tee. Chubby’s Fuel N’ Gruel, it announces. It hangs off his gangly limbs like an ill-fitting hanger.

He salutes you in good humour, and looks you up and down.

“Nice outfit,” he says, “glad to see you’re taking to the rules seriously for once.”

“Wh-what about you?” you ask, “what happened to, just, just, just assume that every planet’s trying to kill you?” You take that moment to take in a quick survey of the surroundings. It’s really more like some more aesthetic take on the Amazonian jungles you used to see on tv. In the distance you can just make out the rushing of a waterfall. An almost paradise. He shrugs half-heartedly.

“I tapped into the ship’s old mini-verse listings,” he tells you, hands full and stained with what you can only presume are some sort of bulbous, hairy fruit. That's what she said. “The ship’s been draining a disproportionate amount of energy and we need a safe zone to restock.” He pauses. “We could be in any one of a good quadrillion of some failed startup universe that some Rick reject left to float in a relative nethersphere, stuck in a time loop.”

“No reason for anything to survive, huh?”

“You’re getting it, champ,” he replies, and returns to rooting through the winding shrub. “Do me a favor and use a tracker to check the place for any other edible plants, would you? My cyber-index listings can only go so far.”

You give a nod and slip back into the ship. You haven’t seen him so relaxed since god knows when. It’s a good look for him.

The ship’s tracking control’s are the most basic function of the entire unit model, basically emitting a series of pulses every few seconds in routine and sending feedback to the pilot com with a list of any kind of flora and fauna that might be stored in its encyclopedic memory banks. Or criminal records, if need be. This was, after all, an old federation ship.

There’s a second of beeping and then a read-out. You press a button and a blinker pops out on screen. You click “send” and soon you hear him shout a “got it” your way before it’s followed with the muffled shuffle and squelch of retreating foot steps.

“W-wait!” you yell, hanging one arm to catch against the door frame as you watch him leave. “Don’t y-you want me to come along? You know, just in case?”

He turns back. “Nope,” he responds, hand cupped around his mouth, “you know you, you might wanna take this time to get your legs stretched. Just get back to base before dark.”

You give a mock salute and he turns back to leave, Chubby’s Fuel disappearing from sight as he eventually slips into a rising grove of spindly branched foliage.

You spend a good hour or so back in the ship console, checking fuel gauges and trying to fiddle your way past the communication barrier’s problem with the location shift. No go. There’s probably at least a few limits to multiversal calling, and that might include teleportation into should-be nonexistent pocket universes. You sigh. Guess that leaves exploring, then.

Since you’re already well kitted up, you fish out a spare pair of old leather boots stashed from the closet, pat down uncomfortably at your gums to be sure your brand new tracker chip is secure, then set off in a vague direction opposite of where your cyborg boyfriend has just headed off to. Not like he’ll have a hard time finding me, you think, and give a disturbed little lick at the cybernetic filling latched onto your molar.

It isn’t even a few minutes before you’re struggling to get stable footing amongst the alien tree roots, winding and condense like a time on earth where humans had been a mere footnote in mother nature’s to-do list. Jesus, you grumble to yourself, how the fuck is anyone supposed to be getting around here anyway. Except no one _does_ get around here, you remind yourself, until you trip and land face first into an uneven clearing.

There are a few things that go through your mind as you recover from a mouth full of dirt and elbow your way back to your knees. One. There’s no warmth of the sunlight. You look up and you are in the midst of the shadow of one gargantuan tree, and upon closer observation, have just realised that every upturned root and piercing bit of bark you have stumbled into is only a continuous mass of this incredible thing. Two. That is… a very familiar etching on that bit of wood there.

When you clamber to your feet you head immediately to inspect it, running the tips of your fingertips along the grooves. Feels almost… man made. You begin a light walk around the tree, and behind you, the sun begins its slow descent and casts your shadow against the bark until you have to squint to follow the almost coherent line of scrawl encircling its wooden exterior.

Shit, you were supposed to be heading back, you realise, and look up. There is a sizeable stone pile settled in front of you. A sizeable pile of… rounded blocks with the same line of linguistic etching. You gulp. He was wrong; no fucking way this place was uninhabited. Was there… was there enough of a developed civilisation living here to have developed its own religion? The pile is overgrown with moss but you scrape your nails with the nagging feeling that you’ve seen this vague mess somewhere before. When you manage to pull away a good stretch of inches from the stony totem you recognise a very distinct face carved into the rock, and the air stops and catches in your throat. In the next second you are yelling for Morty and sprinting break neck in your best guess of where the ship might be.

Any one in a quadrillion universes, huh? You swear as a branch cuts at your cheek. Of course you'd been here before. The flash of a familiar face through your mind sends an ache into your chest like you haven't felt since old nightmares from months ago.

Of any of the quadrillion technically nonexistent universes, of course, it’d have to be this one.

You know exactly where you are.

 

\---

 

When you wake up it’s not an instantaneous burst back into consciousness. The movies get it all wrong. You spend a few minutes slipping in and out of a daze, focusing on the dull throb of a concussion until your bleary eyes settle back in focus. There’s still the steady thrum of your other eye, and you’re glad to find it still in standby. Mental orders tap into the idle circuitry, and a warped video recording loops back for you to review.

Not much there. A lot of walking. A lot of greenery in not a lot of specific direction. Then a blur, a flurry of movement, a hand…

The dull throb comes back and you wince. You remember the rock before it flashes into the video’s focus. It’s a good thing that a hearty thump from a rock is hardly a comparison to the raw grit of a well-conditioned cybernetics system. But where had the attackers come from? Hadn’t they been listed down in the ship’s tracker?

You make a mental review of the limitations to the ship’s pulsar ability. A horizontal scan… it had scanned ground and roots and land-based vegetation with no trace of fauna. So that left… the trees? They had been hiding in the trees?

You trace back and regard the scarcity of upturned earth from before. Another dull shot of pain. Wince. No, living. Living in the trees. “Fucking tree people,” you snarl, “of course it h-had to be fucking tree people.”

“Akamala,” something says behind you, and steps around your forced seat in the dirt until he comes into view. “Oorgu kamala.”

“Fuck off,” you reply.

Your hands are pulled behind your back. From the splinters pushing through the cotton blend of your shirt you can give a good guess that you are tied up to an impressively thick wooden stake. You shift your wrists. Rough and waxy. Sinew-like vines that would be a feat to break out of, even for you. Fucking perfect. You groan.

More come up to join your captor; strange toad-like bipeds, all flab and ornamental tusks and wooden beads folded up into earlobes or cast in nose piercings. A good mob of them have begun to gossip and gibber, but there isn’t a word of theirs you can catch. What the hell was going on?

“What, are you supposed to be aboriginal flarbaks?” you snort, “pretty racist, bro.”

“Kayaka, toka palaki sa sa,” he says, and jabs a finger at your face. “Bathalag.”

You scowl as he continues to prod at your cheeks, filling your nose with the scent of age old shit and grass. The others allow him a moment of this until an old crone of their species sidles up beside him. Most likely an elder. She pulls at a string of jewelry dangling from the meaty folds of her squat neck, adorned with haphazardly smoothed stones and fossilized pieces of wood. Some have been adorned with a hint of an alphabet.

“Bathalag,” she repeats, and the big brute of a lump assaulting you with the smell of shit on his fingers steps a foot or two back.

Right. You crane your neck to take a look at the palm-sized stone she is lifting towards you. It looks almost like… like...

Like you.

“What the hell?” you say, and struggle at the bonds you can’t see marking red welts across your wrists. 

There’s a wave of excitement at your reaction, and the odd tongue of chatter spreads like wildfire, with a large number of them snarling and stamping bare feet into the mush and dirt. Probably not good.

A start up of chanting signals a few of them to raise their fists, and at this the big one takes a crudely fashioned spear from one of the toad-like creatures. He jabs it at your chest and it nicks against your skin as he rips a good tear into it. Shit. _Definitely_ not good.

“T-ta, ta-tak,” you try, tripping over your thoughts as you race to try and formulate some sort of connection between the spewed syllables. Whirring. A dull shoot of pain. Nothing. Shit shit shit.

The big one takes a couple meaty paws and grabs at your imprisoning stake while you scream obscenities at him in some fifty or so languages hoping one of them sticks and you can tell him exactly where you think that spear of his could be shoved into. No good. After a certain amount of wrestling with it he manages to uproot the stake, and as a result, you, into the air. You feel a rough bump and stay suspended so you suppose one of these other assholes is helping him to carry you to some sacrificial shit pit where they can offer you to some similar Morty-looking god.

The blood rushes to your head, and as a result, the pulsating migraine worsens. Your vision is swimming too much to focus enough to launch coordinates into the ship console. Around you, and from your limited view of the forest floor and a few grotesque appendages, you can tell there is some kind of uniform chanting going on. More stamping. Yelling. The old crone is yelling, too. What the hell is happening.

You are being carried forward, and after a while the ground just becomes a blur of grassy green and stones and dirt so you focus on trying to peg distinct markings that might alert you to their approaching the ship. After a solid minute you decide this is a fruitless venture, and decide that if you die here you may as well die with some kind of dignity. You stiffen your upper lip. It was difficult to look dignified and resigned when one was suspended belly-down and strapped to a log carried by probably overweight toad-boars.

The halt is so sudden your chin crashes down against your collarbone. You swear again.

“What?” you snap, “what, what could it possibly be now?”

No response.

There’s some rustling overhead, and you struggle to stretch your neck against the wood to see what the commotion is about.

“Hulaga taka,” you hear. Your stomach drops.

“Akamala, aaka gitala,” he says, and then you can feel the shift in gravity as your gracious hosts slowly settle the stake so that you stumble to stand face to face with Morty, scratches on his face and eyes skewed with an ill-fitting look of authority. The top half of his suit has been discarded, and it seems like he’s made some kind of makeshift capelet of leaves in your absence.

Lines of mud have been wiped hurriedly across his cheeks, caked into tiny open scratches and in some kind of, you think, mockery of western movie native americans.

“Kuloohud.”

Around you, lumbering bipeds struggle to kneel as quickly as they can, heads bowed. To your left, a couple of devotees have gone the extra mile and are now lying prostrate, arms extended and faces mashed into the mud. They don’t seem to mind.

He points a finger in your direction, and after some scuffle you can’t see you are rubbing at your newly released limbs, feeling at the raised bruising along your wrists.

“Mort,” you begin very slowly, “if this is some kind of flash mob foreplay, I’m not digging it.”

“Hakama yutiki cha chaka,” he orders, and the mob clambers to their feet. The little crone scampers up, bowing low and turning. After a few garbled exchanges with him, she turns and leads the shambling crowd back to their origin. More chattering. You have the worst headache in the world.

Morty hurries to reach your side, discreetly palming your hand in his and holding it tight.

“Glad you’re not dead,” he whispers, leaning towards you while you both hurry along behind them, “last time I f-found them sacrificing their, uh, their kids to a statue they had of me down b-by the river.”

He glances at you, and a look of worry crosses his face. “Are you walking all right?”

The exasperation on your face shuts him up quick.

“Mind telling me what the hell is going on?”

“Oh.”

He scratches the back of his head with his free hand. The leaf capelet shuffles.

“I’m kind of, uhm,” he stammers, “I’m, I-I’m kind of their ruler, I guess?”

It’s properly dark when you reach the camp clearing, and a few of the ones that had stayed home from the ritual sacrifice had gotten a good bonfire going. The flickering light from the flame as it glowered stray embers into the air cast itself like a beatific halo of light around him. There’s blankness in the space where your mind should be, so you don’t really have anything clever to say in response.

“More like god,” you say tiredly.

He gives a nervous little curve of a smile.

“O-or god,” he says.

 

\---

 

_Deep, deep in the jungle, nestled safely from view and sitting idly in wait, the ship’s pilot com ebbs in and out of standby mode. There’s a flicker of a miniscule something, dry and wriggling, and then silence._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long break everyone. gonna try and keep at this every other day so i don't lose interest in the ending, which i'm mad excited to get to.


	6. Draco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there's something in the ship, dawg.

“You don’t have to leave _right now_ ,” he whines.

The fifteenth time in as many minutes. Beside him, one of the smaller teeny-versians, crude lantern in hand, is garbling and chirping shrilly at him, in an effort to direct him along the smoother path. It’s not helping much. 

You’ve still got your back to them while you struggle to make the way back to base in the dark, path lit only by a makeshift torch you’d taken from the camp. Behind you, Morty is attempting to not skin his knees every time he falls over his own feet.

You’ve shut off any additional functions to save energy and backtrack the ship’s pulsar, though even if you weren’t running on backup storage, you never did get around to upgrading your system to fit in night vision. Sure, some might _think_ it sounds useful, but have you ever tried depending on radiated green filter while skulking around using only one eye? It’s hell on depth perception is what it is. In the dark, you stub your pinky toe on a hidden stump.

“You expect me to just sit around in some paradise villa while our mobile base is out there, exposed and fully armed?”

“W-w-well,” he says loudly, “y-yeah, actually! The tree people, you know, they worked really hard making that little hut for us --”

You snort loud enough for him to hear and slap at an overhanging branch. A few seconds later, you hear him smack face-first into it.

“It had a bed and everything!” he complains.

You pull at one last dead branch, snapping it off before it can make contact. Feet touch down on smoother ground, and your eyes adjust to the newly found clearing, where the ship looks to be waiting patiently with its door to the cockpit left wide open and welcoming. You throw down your torch, stamping it out in the dark until its embers die out and you half-race to the arms of the only home you’ve known for years.

It never occurred to you how bare your arms had been until now, when the pace of your heartbeat slows and the dull throbbing swell of your earlier concussion seems to fade out with your relief. You trace your finger tips over the banged up armored skin of the _Cassiopeia_.

“She’s good,” you hear. From beside you, Morty tries to catch his breath from catching up to you.

“Urga gobaga,” the little alien says, and begins to bang one hand against the door frame to inspect it. Morty pulls him back to chastise him in his own tongue just as you take a step to bring your fist down to its little maw. The message seems to come across clear and it backs up a few meters to wonder at this thing from afar. Little idiot couldn’t even comprehend it beyond some sort of sky god’s chariot, you reckon. Pocket nethersphere laws dictate that a discarded universe like this one serve an eternal time loop, and from the looks of the place, these morons were bound to keep reliving their pretense of the stone age.

You’re reminded of how tired you are, as you begin your lope into the gaping mouth of your home.

“I need to, I need to recharge,” you announce to the still air.

You can feel Morty regard you quietly from the back of your skull.

“Morty,” he starts. You slow your steps, but don’t stop your retreat into the humming machinery.

“Morty,” he says, “w-why don’t you stay with us for tonight, huh? The, uhh, the tree guys they’re throwing me a--”

“A little party?” It comes out meaner than you thought.

He pauses.

“... Yeah, a little party, sort of, seeing as I w-was gone so long.”

The sound of feet shuffling from one to another in awkward anticipation. You stop, but keep your eyes ahead to the familiar darkness.

“You know, m-maybe you can join us--”

There’s a little irritation and you feel even more exhausted than you were. These past few days have been a mess. This week’s been a mess. This year.

“When you, you, you stop being such a pissy bitch,” he finishes sharply.

You breathe out when you hear the rustle of their retreating presence, and you wait for the flow of their lantern to fade out of peripheral view before you reach for the door panel and it shuts behind you with a serene _hissss_.

The dampened cool of the system’s air vents works wonders on you, surrounding you in a deep quiet that resonates down in your bones. You feel better already.

You tug the torn shirt off, cottony threads that stuck to the fresh wound on your chest alerting you with a painful sting to make sure you don’t forget what happens from having your guard down. You’ll clean and dress it in the morning.

Right now the only solid thing you want to focus on is the firm sponginess of the mattress as you lay your knee against the bed to steady yourself. Your eye gives a final weak buzz, and then suddenly your natural depth perception shifts to compensate the sudden lack of vision in your right eye. You fall flat on your face into the still mussed pile of pillows and bed sheets.

“Fuck.”

You pull elbows until the heaviness of your body leans with its back to the cold wall of your quarters, one good eye poking just above the folds that smell too much like their last occupant. With some guilt you inhale a little deeper, coaxing the comfort into your lungs to make up for the ache in your frame.

Times like this, you wish you didn’t need him. You wish you weren’t scratching nails raw at justification of the gaping chasm you let yourself slip into; wish habit had allowed you to keep him at arm’s length. But you do need him. You need him as long as _he’s_ out there waiting and looking for him. For as long as _he_ knows you’re gone.

You breathe deep, let yourself shallow your thoughts. Think of other things that keep your pace steady and your mind blank. It becomes musings of someone else, abstract loops that transition to what will happen at the grand conclusion, the look on their face, the idea of a home becoming more of the empty husk of a stolen cruiser and then spinning whole and alive in the idea of someone else entirely.

You don’t notice when you doze into the half-slumber you’ve beaten into yourself, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours when you are once again jolted awake by the sound of scuffling down the corridor. Through the open quarter door you swear you could have caught the glimpse of a shadow just as your eyes fluttered open.

“Hello?” you call, after a good five seconds of silence. “Mort, is that you?” you try.

No response. Your mouth tastes dry as your hands scramble to steady yourself and push one leg against the floor, mind racing to remember exactly where it is you egged Morty store his analogue pea-shooter.

Shit, you have no fucking idea. Raw agility and hopefully enough strength to subdue the intruder will have to do. A new rush of adrenaline makes up for the protest of your limbs as they beg for rest.

You make a mental survey of the litheness of your muscles, easing them into position as you slide your bare feet against the edge of the room and up to the door frame, where you crane your neck just enough to get a good summary of the hallway beyond. A scuffling. Something dry and rough scraping ever so slightly against metal.

You’re swearing; something must have gotten in during the span of hours you had been knocked out and Morty had come to your rescue. What with the unexpected development of sentient life forms already pre-existing your arrival, you wouldn’t doubt this thing might have developed some kind of killer instinct in the same recurring time loop.

Left hand over the catch in the panelling just by the door. Slip it open. There’s a faded read out on the digital panel, but it’s not good. Batteries are way too drained to flood the hallways with lights, and from the dim glow of the windows it’s at least a good while until sunrise. Too drained to have remotely charged your internal circuitry, either. Goddammit. You doubt you’d make it til sunrise, anyway.

You mentally curse at Morty for forcing you to keep that old _Alien_ VCR. _Important earth culture_ , he had claimed, before pressuring you into spending a few credits for them in that defunct junk shop. He had been missing home so you had made the exception, but now the old film is running reruns in the back of your mind. God, you hope that makes you Ripley in this situation.

But trapped in the dying husk of your ship, right eye still down and fracturing your perception of the environment and your usually tensile movement into an aggravating handicap, the odds don’t look so good.

Quick, quiet, deadly, you think, and slip into the hallway with your head ducked and your feet spaced apart to make up for your current lack of balance. You can make it to your makeshift kitchen, you think, keeping low and contained. Your eyes whip from left to right as you suddenly jerk your body against the wall, relying on the pressure of your back against it to guide you in the dark of the space until you push back against a sizeable enough cavity to take a breather in.

You spread your fingers to touch at the walls to either side of you to gauge space. You never were very good at working one-eyed in a tense situation; after all you had your dummy Rick to take the punches for you and right now panic is your worst enemy. But summoning calm and trying to keep awake is too much a feat, so you rely on tactics to try and find this thing before it finds you. You take another long gulp of air before you slip back out.

I can just make it to the door, you think. I can wait it out til morning, come back with a good handful of those brutes to take care of this for me. Your thoughts are cut short just as the rapid scratching behind you picks up drops your stomach to your knees. Heavy. Fast. You’d know the sound of them anywhere.

Claws.

Your feet think faster than you do. Always have. The ready spring in your ankles launches you in a direct beeline for the door to the ship. If you can just make it a little past the next section of the ship…  
You stretch your spine out to its fullest, digits of your hand already stretched out to trip the catch to the room’s emergency control panel. Behind you the click of claws as they try to grasp for leverage against the metal flooring stops, and a few inches from your goal there is a weight launched at the small of your back. You can just make out the pricks of claws digging into the soft of your bare skin, not enough to pierce but definitely enough to wake you up completely, just before you are bashed headfirst into the steely panelling of the floor.

There’s a crack, an awful shock of pain, before silence and exhaustion once again fill the ringing in your ears. You black out.

 

 

 

“--rty?”

You sputter, nostrils half filled with water and the shrill ringing in your ears muting every sense until the white of raw daylight pours into you. There’s no sense of pain in you that you can focus on; it reverberates deep from the strain of lack of rest down to the solid sting of your chest as you remember the gash you left unchecked.

“Morty?” he says again. He’s got his hands wiping as gently as he can across your cheeks, your brow, the deep bags beneath your eyes, but you can feel worry though the pressure of his fingertips as they inspect every minute detail of your face. The warmth of his lap beneath you have you guessing you’ve been lying like this for a while.

There’s blood on his fingers, but not much. Everything smells like blood, now that you think about it.

“Oh, oh ge-e-ez,” he says, half-laughing like his eyes aren’t slightly tinged red and puffy around the lids, “y-y-you scared me, man, you really, really scared me.”

You can tell he’s scared to hold you in any kind of roughness, a bit shattered about wanting to hold you tight enough against him.

You look down to inspect yourself.

There’s come kind of woven thatch over your shoulders and torso, partially damp from where it covers the drops of water still clinging to your skin. He wears the same pattern around his shoulders, curly bangs slick against his forehead with sweat despite the cool breeze.

He looks at you directly, scanning for any damage as he speaks. Your right eye continues to sit silent, and you wonder if he can see the blank blue-grey that comes over it, dead and useless. 

“I l-left the camp already, came in this morning, I, I sort of expected you to show up by then, all angry ‘cause I was late a-and, and,” he starts, “I found you lying with, with little scratches all over you? W-weird raised wounds on you? And your head on the ground, b-blood…”

He cuts off, swallows.

“Your nose is all banged up.” He tries to smile but it’s wavering. “You must’ve smashed it when you fell, I think.”

“Yeah probably,” you say, wincing.

“You didn’t see anything?”

He shakes his head. No sign of the thing, then.

He can’t stop staring at you, and for a reason you can’t name it makes you feel sick. He’s never seen you like this, you think. Too tired to even get up. Beaten into the ground and in worse disrepair than you’ve ever allowed him to see you. You turn your head away, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths.

Assess the situation. He must have dragged you out here, hauled you down to the closest body of water when you didn’t wake up. The blood must have terrified him, could have come from any kind of fatal head wound until he had washed the congealing mess off your face and found your nose with its bruising and odd angle. Easily fixed, no worry there.

But the raised wounds, that was another story. There are places in you that are more numb and damaged than you remember, so with some effort you lift your hand and motion to at the covers. He settles a hand at the back of your head to cradle it while you inspect the damage. Large welts mark against the side of your stomach where you can assume they stretch to your back. You groan, and he helps settle you back to lie comfortably in his lap.

“Electrical burns,” you tell him, shutting your eyes as you lean back.

“Last night, there was something in the ship. Something alive; probably got in while we were both… preoccupied.”

You breathe deeply. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together. You turn to look at him, and his gaze is wide and wondering.

“Stealing the ship’s power; digging and draining into the electrical circuitry and hiding in the vents or something. It’s expelling it as a form of attack, I’m guessing,” you tell him, “I don’t know how something like that could have survived in a tropical wilderness, but I _do_ know that until we get it out of the ship we’re fighting a losing battle until the backup power gives out and lives us free-floating in the vacuum.”

“So we have to get it out. Right now?”

“Yeah,” you say, holding in your breath and expelling it with effort as you sit up.

He helps you to your feet, arms braced around you in case you might decide it would be a good time to black out again. You lean your head against the curve of his shoulder, bent over from the pain of the raised welts across your back. Deep tissue damage, most likely. You’ve got the meds to handle numbing, but no way you’ll be able to make it across realities on a wild goose chase until you find proper facilities to treat it.

He’s not an idiot. Not much of one, anyway. One look at you and there’s a firmness that picks up in his movements, fires up as it occurs to you both on the next course of action.

“Morty,” you say, “you think you can handle this one?”

“Y… yeah,” he says quietly, helping you stagger the way back to the clearing. “You can count on me.”

You rest your head against the ridge of his collarbone, sighing.

“You’re a good kid, Mort.”

He gives out a surprised little chuckle at your attempt at praise, though you can feel his heartbeat escalate as you both approach the rising height of the ship. Even in the midday sun the sheeting keeps it cool, chameleon panels adapting to circulate an even temperature for a quick getaway.

You refuse it when he attempts to leave you at a safe distance, and without wanting to start an argument lowers the ship’s door to allow you both into it the belly of the beast. Metaphorically speaking, hopefully.

“Leave it open,” you instruct him, when he reaches for the control panel. “If both of us can’t take it we can at least smoke it out.”

In the daylight the ship is less intimidating. The few windows that are spread across the length of it are enough to allow light to filter through and guide you both despite the _Cassiopeia_ ’s attempt to store power by dimming all lights to a bare thirty percent. The familiar electrical hum is labored and stalling, and the newfound lack of audible mechanisms makes Morty shudder beside you.

He pulls a chair up in your makeshift dining room and seats you down on one of the cheap foldable picnic chairs. You groan a little when your back settles against the plastic backing.

Your ears both twitch at the sound of something shifting in the direction of the sleeping quarters. The clicking motions of movement, and then the buzzing starts. You motion with a flick of your head towards the entrance, mouthing a “ _stay down_ ” when he gulps and nods. It’s a shame there’s hardly a time for you to appreciate his finally putting experience into practice when the goddamn thing decides it’s an optimum time to make a show and run for it.

You don’t catch much from where you are seated: you see the dull green blur of the thing as it launches at Morty, and from what you can see behind him, his first reaction is to scream and thump it sideways in an effort of self-defense. It does the job well enough. The force redirects it to fall against the floor, and you have a good view of it as it takes a moment to flip onto its back and skid for traction.

Reptilian.

It backs up and hisses, claws clicking while hot white sparks jump and crackle against its scales. It’s not much bigger than a little lap dog, but what it lacks in size it makes up for with the rows of dagger teeth that glint from the electrical light. It jerks back, flipping over to run in the direction of the cockpit.

Fast little fucker, too.

“Oh god, oh god!” Morty yells, and you watch him bolt after it.

“Morty, wait!” you call, half-limping and dragging the heavy weight of your own collapsing limbs as you follow in suit. Your heart drops when you see it crash past the ship’s door, completely ignoring the attraction of freedom for… for.

Morty is perched outside the pilot’s sector, pale and sweating, eyes flitting as he tries to come up with a plan to take a snatch at the thing. It’s a huge effort but you pull up against the walls until you stand opposite where he is pressed to the side of the room’s entrance. Inside, you can hear it clicking and buzzing closeby, no doubt waiting for one of you to come crashing in after it until it decides to release the entire bulk of a federation ship’s stored electrical charge in enough voltage to completely fry anything within a mile or two radius.

You turn your head to watch Morty, his eyes shut tight while you watch the gears in his head try to turn.

“Hey, hey,” you call in as hushed a tone as you can, and he opens his eyes wide in panic to look over to you.

“You’re not supposed to be going after it,” he hisses.

You ignore him. “Take off your pants,” you whisper.

His eyes almost bug out of his sockets.

“There’s no time for dicking around, you asshole!”

“Just do it,” you insist, and after shutting his eyes and considering his own options, he concedes and gets to work at peeling off the day-old second skin. When he’s done he looks pointedly at you, brows furrowed like he’s going to yell, standing in his brief’s red and shaking.

You motion with your head at the doorway between the two of you.

He shakes his vigorously. “Are you fucking k-kidding me? He’ll kill us! He’ll e-electrify _everything_!”

You motion again and he says a barely audible prayer before he tosses the discarded suit bottom at what might just be the living equivalent of a highly aggressive fatal stretch of live wire coursing through the heart of a nuclear bomb waiting to happen. He shuts his eyes and you peek around the door.

The second skin suit works like this. Originally designed and intended for a more flexible under armor, it was a suit built to last. Polyblends of fabric and live wiring resulted in what, to a degree, was as shock and damage proof as you could only expect a citadel of self-congratulating geniuses to manufacture for their own guaranteed safety. Now, it’s a well known fact that versions of a certain genius don’t all come in standard size, what with five digits and one torso being a certain privilege granted to general humanoid species, and one important detail in a second skin was that it was, after all built in function to fit.

Self-modifying textile that molded itself to fit a uniformed Rick, but in its current state under the skilled hands of a certain hacker, one could say, it might be suited to instead bond to the nearest living user that it makes contact with.

So suffice to say that when you finally convince Morty to grow some balls and take a look at the thing, it is sufficiently wrapped up in a neat little bundle, limbs wrapped tight to its body in a black and grey lined silicon finish. The shudder of electrical shocks surge motion as volt after volt is absorbed and recoiled into the material.

Morty stands over it, having a fit as it is and snapping at the air despite the pull of the suit fabric that clamp its jaws half-shut.

“And that’s how we do it,” you say, and slump into the pilot seat. After studying it for a moment or two, he bends down to take a closer look. You watch him warily. It’s like watching a six year old kid stop to look at something curdling and slimy he’s just found along the shoreline. Never good news.

“I remember this guy,” he says, without looking to meet your eye.

“They had them back in, back in the desert fair. They were much smaller though, l-like flies. Only this one is huge compared to, uhh, that.”

He’s squat on the balls of his feet, half sat with in a thatch shawl and the white of his briefs, silent but for a few _hmm_ ’s and _ohh_ ’s now and then.

“I know what you’re going to say,” you tell him, “and the answer is no.”

He picks it up.

“We’re going to climb a few clicks into deep space,” you continue, “and then shoot it out of an airlock.”

“We, we can’t do that!”

“And why not?”

“It’s… kind of cute,” he says lamely.

“It’s not cute.”

“We should keep it.”

“Morty,” you say, but he doesn’t hear. He’s cooing at it now. The bundle goes still and you watch as the little reptilian head tilts to look up at him, slits of its eyes widening.

“I’m going to name it--”

“Don’t name it.”

“Snuffles.”

He looks at you proudly.

“I had a, a, a dog named Snuffles, once,” he tells you warmly, grinning wide.

You narrow your eyes at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have patience with the chap folks, this'll all tie together in the end  
> don't even worry about it


End file.
